Format 3tb us disk

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I have a 3tb disk that was working great on a UNIX system. I have upgraded the disks and now have a spare disk which I thought Id use on my windows system. However it had 3 800gb sections so to make one continuous dis I deleted 2 expecting to see a continuous area to format but I can now only see 800 gb there does not appear to be any other sectors how can I get the space back to use the disk as a backup?

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What does Windows Disk management show ? The missing partitions may be RAW format.
You can try and ‘rescue’ the partitions using the free MiniTool Partition Wizard.

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If it’s worth your time and you would like to insure that all the sectors on the disk are good, I suggest using DISKPART since you’re re-purposing a disk from another system.

First use the command “list disk” to identify your 3TB disk.  Then the command “select disk #” to select the number of your 3TB disk (“#” is the number assigned to the disk by DISKPART.  That will give your 3TB disk focus.

Next use the “clean” command to remove all formatting from the disk.  After that, use “convert GPT” to make the 3TB disk a GPT disk.  Then use “format fs=ntfs”.  That will take a while to run, but every sector will be checked and any bad sectors will be marked as unusable and will never be written.  If you don’t want to wait that long, you can use “format fs=ntfs quick” for a quick format.

In that same syntax you can also give the volume a label by adding “label=mylabel” and type in your preferred label instead of “mylabel”.  For a quick format then, “format fs=ntfs quick label=mylabel”.

My preference is always full format, even on a new disk, but we all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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That is definitely an “if you have loads of free time” option.

Personally I prefer to reply on the quality and ECC of modern hard disks and use the time for more fun stuff.

cheers, Paul

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Im happy to type in a command but None of the above answers solves the problem.

diskpart is only seeing 800gb as before and it should be 3tb help please

Disk management only shows 800gb

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If you still have access to the unix system, can you mount the errant disk there and ‘attack’ it with Gparted ?

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WSbiddles wrote:

diskpart is only seeing 800gb

Did you follow through with the listed steps, or just back out when you only saw 800GB?

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems; we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

We were all once "Average Users".

Computer Specs

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MiniTool Partition Wizard, as suggested above, will do it.

Alternatively, open Disk Management, delete all partitions, create a new partition of 3TB.

cheers, Paul

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Thats where i started i deleted the partions in disk management and they just vanished so i got left witb just 800g  and not seeing anything else even mini disk partition displays only 800g so i asked here as im stumped

Will look at unix but dont reLly know my way around as  i waant to used the disk on windows

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Not “disk management”, the command line tool “DISKPART”.

Might have to use “clean all” instead of just “clean” if the disk has a format Windows doesn’t recognize correctly, but even that isn’t completely certain…

anonymous wrote:

Will look at unix but dont reLly know my way around as i waant to used the disk on windows

Well yeah, but Windows doesn’t really have a good equivalent to “dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/${whatever}” … the DISKPART “clean all” is about the closest thing without third-party utilities.

Using a Linux liveboot or some such to unscramble drive formatting for use with Windows is not uncommon. Seems that if Windows sees data that is just “too wrong”, it won’t allow any access to it… not even to fix it. So if there was a particularly unlucky error with the partition table…

Linux and Unix will at least overwrite everything if told to, and all zeroes is something that Windows will agree to repartition and format.

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If Windows is only seeing 800GB then you may have a problem with the disk.

Install MiniTool PW and let us know what it sees.

cheers, Paul

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